This story originally came across my email and I was reminded that it is a beautiful way to celebrate Christmas Holiday spirit so I thought I’d share. This is such a beautiful story that makes you understand that things truly do happen for a reason. Don’t forget to grab the tissue box.

The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn, arrived in early October excited about their opportunities. When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve. They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc… and on December 18th they were ahead of schedule and just about finished. On December 19th a terrible tempest – a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days. On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high. The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home. On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church. By this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later. She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc… to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area. Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was like a sheet.. ‘Pastor,’ she asked, ‘where did you get that tablecloth?’ The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria. The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the Tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria. When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. He was captured, sent to prison and she never saw her husband or her home again. The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth, but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home, that was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a house cleaning job. What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return. One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn’t leaving. The man asked him where he got the Tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike. He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years in between. The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier. He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman’s apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine. This true Story was submitted by Pastor Rob Reid.

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

If you need a good Christmas laugh, check out this Jimmy Kimmel Christmas Prank video.

WOW seems like we just started this journey through BLOGMAS and here we are 3 days until Christmas. Today and tomorrow are my BIG days preparing for Christmas. These are the days that I’m mostly in the kitchen or cleaning the house, wrapping last minute packages or running last minutes errands for ingredients for the BIG DAY. The only thing on my list that I didn’t accomplish was the cleaning so will spend all day tomorrow doing laundry, vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms.

Remember when I told you I was a list girl? Well, these help – A LOT! I couldn’t get very good pictures, but those little presents are battery operated lights that change colors (red, blue and green) that I’m going to include on the plate when I deliver the goodies to the neighbors. The purple list is accomplished and half the green list is done and will be finished up tomorrow and Wednesday.

This is Cinnamon Roll day too – YUMMY! One of my favorite days of the year. The recipe originally came from one of my favorite aunts who taught me a lot about art, cooking and just plain being creative. I have made a few minor updates to suit our tastes, but this recipe was ALL her and a secret that my cousin and I kept until the day she died.

When re-heating rolls, put a pad of butter on top of roll before microwaving.These freeze really well.

As we get to the end of our countdown I have remembered a few more fun anecdotes.

Every year we received a box of See’s candy and I was ALWAYS on the search for the sprinkle coated ones a.k.a. Milk Bordeauxs YUMMY!

One year my dad got my mom diamond earrings. He wrapped them in their original box and then with my brother’s and my help we proceeded to nest these in other boxes (wrapping each box as we went) culminating with a Dishwasher box full of bricks in the bottom – Boy was she surprised and it made for chaotic family fun on Christmas Eve.

Another year we built an elaborate scavenger hunt all through the house to lead my dad to his ultimate gift in the garage.

This is a really hard category for me. I LOVE Christmas! There is nothing about this season I don’t like short of maybe crowds of rude people and Black Friday. Being a military family on a tight budget I’ve always started shopping early to work everything we want to do into our tight budget.

If I had to pick just one though, it would be putting up the tree as a family while eating leftover turkey (from Thanksgiving) sandwiches. We usually put our tree up just after Thanksgiving and leave it until Kings Day, the Epiphany on January 6th. For that reason we like to go cut our own tree so it’s fresh and last the entire time. I use an apple cider/sugar mix that keeps the sap from forming on the cut area and keep the water cool and full.

When I was a kid we did a BIG family get together with a buffet of food and opening our family presents on Christmas Eve. I just saw a few of my cousins and we were reminiscing about some of those holidays and LOL how horrible our wardrobes were back then. The first picture here is especially special because it is those grandparent’s house that we are rehabbing now.

Thankfully, I’m not in the bottom picture because I remember what I was wearing! But I love my brother’s plaid pants and Monica’s floral blouse. If you don’t hear from me for a few days I’m Sure it’s because one them found me LOL.

Then on Christmas Day we did Christmas morning and “Santa” with just the immediate family and then we would do a BIG turkey with all the trimmings including my dad’s stuffing and giblet gravy with all the family as well as extended family, which included crazy Aunt Louise and Uncle Herb, but I’ll tell you more about them on the 10th. I replicated dad’s stuffing recipe a few years ago (Oatnut Sourdough Herb Dressing) and that is now a MUST for the Christmas meal whatever the meat is and I’ll tell you more about that on the 10th as well.

With ALL that has been going on this past year I feel just plain lucky to be able to decorate. So, when it came right down to it I decorated simply and am really happy about it.

Beautiful flowers that my mom sent.

Our tree with some of our favorite ornaments. We’ve always used colored lights and I really like how they blend with our ornaments.

I’ve been doing ELF ON A SHELF on instagram for some very special munchkins and this was one of my more favorite days when they made snow angels in powdered sugar. Actually I silled powdered sugar and the rest fell into place.

I thought about this category a lot and decided that since we were still in transition in the HOUSE FROM HELL our pictures from last year were less than stellar. So I decided to share the pictures from 2014 with you.

These pictures from the Festival of Lights we used to do each year is now over 20 years old and a great way to kick off the holiday season. It’s ALL Volunteer and NON-Profit. It began as a fundraiser sponsored by the Rotary Club to help get the city out of debt and then took on a life of its own and now helps with scholarships and special projects. The festival runs every night from Thanksgiving to New Years. You can drive your own car or take a horse drawn carriage ride through the displays. They have also coordinated a local radio station to listen to as you view the displays. The night we went through the fog was moving in early so a few of the pictures look a bit “smoky”.

As of 2014 they had the world’s tallest (41 feet, 16,000 pounds with working jaw) nutcracker built by a local company, 500,00 lights, 90 animated displays, 3D displays, horse drawn carriage rides through the displays and a Holiday Village with Santa, hot cider with a bake sale and a synchronized light show in the courtyard. The displays depict fairy tales, the military, patriotism, the local logging industry, local vineyards, local fishing and the traditional Christmas songs and scenes. People come from all over to see it. Unfortunately for locals, it doesn’t change much, but is still fun every few years.

Three of my favorite munchkins from next door were coincidentally there the same night we were so had to snap a few pictures of the discussions with Santa.

Even the lights with errors turned out cute. It was difficult to get great pictures or continuous pictures of the animated scenes since there were so many cars behind us.

This snowman is on a corner in our neighborhood hugging a light standard.

These are things that I begin right after Thanksgiving, but I thought it was the prompt for today (I think I was looking at last year’s list). I almost feel guilty that almost ALL of them are accomplished. As for this year’s prompt I do both homemade and store bought depending on what someone wants and/or needs.

Funny story here – I had herb savers on my Amazon Christmas list for 2 years. So 2 years ago I decided to buy myself a Christmas present and got the herb keepers so I could quit using a glass covered with a plastic bag.

So, a couple days before Christmas hubby holds up one of the new herb keepers and asks, what’s this? So I begin explaining what an herb keeper is and he’s like, “No why did you buy them?” Long story short he was getting them for me for Christmas.

So we had our first Christmas dinner last weekend and long story short the prime rib was more medium than medium rare because my OLD meat thermometers, yes both of them were really old and one failed completely and the other one clouded so it could no longer be read and we ended up with meat cooked a bit more than we like. The next day I ordered a new digital one from Amazon and last night I pulled it out to test the chicken I was cooking and hubby was like, “where did that come from?” I’m still LMBO, he had gone and bought one for my stocking the day before.

This year we are forgoing BIG gifts and doing stockings only since this house is eating up all our disposable cash so fast! We are planning a trip for late spring to compensate.

WOW this is a HUGE category! One of my new favorite recipes is from just this year. Some friends took us to lunch at Jack Allen’s Kitchen when we were visiting in Round Rock this past summer and the food was SOOOOOOOOO good that I bought the cook book and have been experimenting ever since.

One of our favorite new recipes is for pimento cheese spread made from scratch. I made some last week and wanted to use it for this past Saturday’s 1st Christmas dinner, but didn’t want the mess of a knife and cracker crumbs so I decided to try and make a fun new way to serve it.

I had some fresh pecans and decided to grind them fine. Then I rolled the cheese spread into small balls and then rolled each one in the pecans. I chilled them overnight and then used toothpicks for serving. Sorry I didn’t get a picture when they were on the pretty plate.

Mix together the cream cheese, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, Vinegar and salt until smooth.

Blend in the grated Monterey Jack cheese and grated Cheddar cheese.

Fold in bell pepper until well distributed.

Chill well.

Serve with crackers.

*I didn’t have any so I used Golden Balsamic Vinegar

We also love to make VAMPIRE SLAYER ARTICHOKE BREAD and cut it into small bites for appetizers. OMG This appetizer replaces any entree – it’s ooey, gooey, cheesy and literally melts in your mouth all the while tantalizing your taste buds from the very first bite!

I LOVE advent calendars, but haven’t done one in many of years. So I thought I’d give you a little history today on the advent calendar instead of showing you what I don’t have. Here are a couple of examples I found on google images.

Traditional advent calendars depict winter in general and feature manger scenes or Jolly old Saint Nick. In today’s modern world though you can find them ranging in theme from sports to technology, from disposable to reusable. Some are window styled with each day being a pane of the window. In some of the more elaborate calendars the pane opens into a box that holds a small toy trinket or a piece of candy. The windows often have a bible verse in each one.

I think I’m almost down to 2½ sides…and I’m FINALLY taking back my life… actually CHASING MY LIFE.

IT IS WHAT IT IS!

I'll ALWAYS be 3 Sides of Crazy cooking in OUR Krazy Kitchen at my Savory Kitchen Table and ALWAYS Eating on the Good China but counting down to normal ~ WHATEVER THAT IS!

I love to cook, read, write, quilt, craft, go antiquing, amateur photography and to learn new things. I’m a Jill of many trades & always have more interests and desires than I have time. LOL I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I love being a homemaker and keeping my family healthy and happy.

As a Christian woman I believe life is all about change and that learning to cope with it as it happens will help you through life. I believe in Murphy’s Law, the Domino Effect, Payback’s a Bitch, and Karma. I also believe that Pay It Forward and living by the Golden Rule go a long way to keep the former from happening to begin with. I believe everything happens for a reason and that life is one big adventure.

I try to see life through rose colored glasses and be as tolerant as possible. My glass is always half full. I am an optimist, extremely positive minded and usually a really upbeat person so anything goes within reason.

I especially love to cook and develop new recipes. I have written a couple of cookbooks for family reunions that I’m working on getting published and have new cook books in the works.